


Last Lost Love

by HSR (helena_s_renn)



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Death Rituals, Ghost Boromir, M/M, Mention of Het, Watersports, non-dead Boromir (sort of), very mild watersports
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-07
Updated: 2009-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:21:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24484246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helena_s_renn/pseuds/HSR
Summary: The real reason why Éomer dreaded the upcoming Hallows was that he had not yet mourned Boromir of Gondor.
Relationships: Boromir (Son of Denethor II)/Éomer Éadig
Kudos: 2





	Last Lost Love

In the second year of the Fourth Age, on All Hallows, Éomer found he didn't wish to participate in another ceremony commemorating the dead. They deserved to be remembered, honored, their names and deeds retold - that he did not dispute. In Gondor, they made it a holiday of games and costumes, scary stories and treats. To the west in the hills and plains of Rohan, it was a much more solemn affair. Dark robes, candles, chant-like dirges did end, eventually, in a chorus of life and light, but only after hours of what had always been, for him, agonizing inactivity. It was creepy, as if wandering spirits filled the rafters for a time. In the War of the Rings and the years leading up to it, Éomer had had more than enough death, though there'd been scant time for mourning.

There was only one part of the local superstitions he even wished he believed: that which was called the One Enchanted Evening by word of mouth, or Last Lost Love by those who claimed a visitation. Supposedly, the spirit of a newly dead would visit his or her true love a last time before departing to the soulish realm, to spend a single night of fleshly delights. This did not happen with every fatality - some died too young, some never found love, or the still-living could choose not to participate and send the lingering ghost away with only a word, "Begone!"

The previous year, Éomer had done his duty as the ruler of his realms, was an active participant in the hours of hymns and sad folk songs. He had said a few words, and recited the names of his kinsman, his fallen warriors, the others in his keeping who had died that others might survive. Not yet seeing his thirtieth year, he had an intimate knowledge of the cycle of life and death, both in what was now his third generation of horses, and his people. One protected and trained the young till they were old enough to procreate, then their young, and so on, maintaining the older generation to help with other duties, meanwhile cultivating interconnected skills and support to sustain the process. He was part of this - he'd been a full Rohirrim since his seventeenth summer. In the first days of rebuilding he'd taken a highborn wife, as was expected of him. Just in the last moon his seed had quickened with a new life; a few short months would change much inexorably.

The real reason why Éomer dreaded the upcoming Hallows was that he had not yet mourned Boromir of Gondor. He'd not said his name during the last ritual. No one had questioned him; perhaps they thought he left it to King Ellesar or Prince Faramir to tend to any final goodbyes if the spirit still lingered. If it did, if it was not just Éomer's conscience that didn't want to let go, he guiltily held on. The few times the Captain could be spared to visit the Roherric allies, he'd been, for Éomer, a hero, a role model, the paramount of his youthful aspirations for himself. Though he was only sister-son to the King, Boromir had taken him under his tutelage along with Théodred. He'd found, under the fine clothes and the best-made armor, that Boromir was a warm and good-humored man when he could afford to be anything but a warrior leader. As they'd trained and fought together with the others of the inner circle, Éomer as a youth and not-quite-man in his blond braids and gangly frame had thought the man culitvated a special bond with him as they'd tempered skills. Boromir had made a man of him, it was true, although it was Éomer who had asked, or demanded, would have seduced if he'd had any clue at the time how to do it, once inducted as into the Riders of the Mark to know the comfort of men, a custom of the Numenorian race, not his.

But he had no excuse not to attend, so Éomer dressed all in black, put the hood up on his long robe, and made his way to the great hall at the appointed time. After the opening song and prayer he led the invocation, which he’d agreed to some time ago. Around him, the mourners sang their sad epics, some ancient and more chant-like. It was strange that his sister was not there to lead it this year. Her piercing ululations could break the darkness, once it settled deep into their bones. Unlike the previous year's Hallows, he didn’t feel sadness, or regret, or even the freeing feeling that came from consciously letting go of those things. He just felt numb.

When the moon had risen high enough he could no longer track it through the windows set high in the walls, Éomer sidled between two pillars into the outer corridor. It had been since he was a pre-adolescent boy that he’d snuck out. Leaving his cloak behind, as the night was warm, he fled down through near empty-streets to the foot of the hill that Meduseld sat atop. No one stopped him, if they spotted him at all. He thought to visit the stables, but did not, wishing only to be alone. If there was peace to be had, it was in feeling much, on his own, and then speeding all those leftover emotions away. How, he didn’t know – there was only the sense he didn’t want anyone living around him just now.

Continuing on into the cleared practice field, Éomer slowed and wandered from fence to target to the little fast-flowing tributary that bordered the meadow. He hopped down the bank, standing upon the narrow spit of sand and gravel that inched out into the inside curve. Not far from this very place was where he’d first met Boromir. He reflected upon that day, of the unblooded youth who didn’t know whether to be respectful or diffident or protective of his place. Naturally, all his words had come out wrong, and he'd soon found himself riding the worst nag in the herd and shining boots and saddles for a week. The next years’ delegations found him better with wordcraft, and, as needed in lands of the free peoples of Middle Earth, warcraft. Boromir was the best; Éomer was honored to learn from him. He remembered their training. The next Steward also knew much of lore, though he claimed his brother, who'd had yet to visit, was much more learned. A boyish crush passed into something Éomer might have termed love, though when it became physical, he was made, pointedly, to understand the difference between love and passion. Reliving all this, Éomer was not all that surprised to find himself standing there, staring at nothing, fully erect. All the more reason to be alone.

As it happened, and could partially be blamed on the current running past his feet, he needed to relieve other needs. It was a fight to let the tumescence of his recollections subside enough. The first trickling drops felt like ecstasy and Éomer groaned with relief, adding his stream to that of the rivulet. When he was nearly drained, there was a rustle downstream close at hand and he cursed himself for being alone out here with nothing but a ceremonial blade at his belt and another hidden in his boot. It would have to suffice. Whatever happened, he would not be one of those hapless souls to die with his manhood in his hand. Cutting off the flow and re-tying his laces, Éomer tracked the noise with his eyes, though he could see nothing. There were definitely footsteps. What sort of malevolent demon could move without even a shadow?

Boromir landed next to him, as if he had jumped down the bank, only Éomer would have seen him had he arrived through present time. “Éomer,” his accented speech thicker than the younger man recalled, “You are out alone and unarmed. Has the war ended, that you would be so careless?” The lilt of his voice made plain this was a jest, and that Boromir knew the answer to his own question.

“My lord,” Éomer intoned with a bow of his head, something he had been too stubborn to do as a youth. “As you were one who fell, I am sure you know… Sauron is vanquished. There are yet a few orcs about in the hills, but I’m reasonably safe in my own city.

“Your city?” Boromir looked him over in a new way. “So then…?”

“Aye, it is left to me to rule over Rohan, with my uncle died in the war, killed by a wraith, and his son my cousin of orcish poison before the muster began.”

There was a pause. “Éowyn?”

Éomer’s mouth fell open in outrage, but he quickly closed it. “You think my sister would make the better king, perhaps?” Then he laughed at his own temper. “Maybe so, but she has found love and a new home. So, it falls to me.”

“She was ever strong. Did you know I had to teach her in secret at first? But she overcame the prohibitions.”

The wording made him wonder. Éomer decided he did not wish to know if he was picking up innuendo when there was none. “Yes, she was held back from the final battle, and once again she flouted tradition by disguising herself. We thought she would die of wounds and…” he thought it sounded incongruous, especially referring to Éowyn, ”a broken heart. It was your brother Faramir who pulled her back from… she was fading, like they say of Elves.”

Boromir looked into the distance. He nodded. “Who did she pine for? Not many were worthy of her.”

“It was Aragorn, once the Ranger, now High King. She met him when he was yet half in disguise, and loved him before the truth would have made her hold herself in check.” Éomer looked at the ground between his feet. Even now, he felt shamed that the man had rejected his kin, his sister. “His heart was given to another…”

“Aye, before you were even born,” Boromir finished for him. “Though it may surprise you to know, there was only one woman he would have, and she a highly born Elf, he was much… freer with himself, in other ways.”

Éomer looked up, into eyes like emerald in shadow, and saw truth there. The first thing that came to mind, had not fully formed as a thought yet, vaulted from his tongue. “Then why are you here, Spirit of Boromir? Why are you not in Gondor, giving your last love to him?” Once again, he was angry. But something held him back from the banishing word.

“There is one lesson yet for you to learn. Have you not found love, Éomer?”

Stiffly, the Rohirrim replied, “I have taken a daughter of Dol Amroth to wife.”

“And do you love her?”

Éomer bowed his head. “I love another.”

“As did I. As did your King Elessar before he gave me to the river, and before that, in the forests of the wild, and yet before, under the spell of Rivendell. I have my secrets as well. Do not despise your bride for not being your first choice. Instead, love her, your life, and your unborn child. Else why go on?”

“How did you know about…?” Éomer began, but it stood to reason. “You didn’t answer my question.”

Now it was Boromir’s turn to laugh. “Well then ask it, so I might answer.”

“Are you dead? Did you truly die? Are you here… as my lost love?”

“I died, and went to places beyond. Though you did not know you were doing it, you have pined for me in turn, by not releasing those bonds. A merry or even bittersweet rememberance of what was is not the same as wishing for what you cannot have. Even a man can fade. You are needed here, Éomer son of Éomund. Let us have our night, and then release me. You are the last to do so. My heart is free, otherwise.”

Some sense of jealousy made the hot-blooded lord want to refuse. There was wonder to be had, though, too, that so many had loved Boromir so well that they merited his visitation. Was it possible, then, to love more than one truly in life as well? Just as he was going to ask the spector, a hand, warm with a firm grip, decidedly lifelike, fell on his wrist. “Will you make me wait? We have till moondown, my friend.”

They shared a nod, which was Éomer’s agreement and much more: his full understanding at last. Traveling back the way he’d come, the horselord wondered again that none of the fewer still about made to speak to him, didn’t even note his passage. Boromir murmured that, with his hand upon him, no one could see him. Éomer’s nostrils flared with a scent of hay and rich velvet, his body hot and at attention again at the comprehension of what they would do.

In Meduseld were many rooms for visiting royalty, far more empty ones than in days past. The choice of the best of them, which had been for some time occupied by Aragorn and his Lady Arwen, was the obvious one. Bolting the door soundlessly, Éomer whispered, “Hold on to me.”

There was much of that. There was a celebration of warm tongues twining and licking, of skin laid bare. Boromir had always been enthusiastic and tonight was more so. Éomer learned the shape and feel of his lover’s entire naked body for the first and last time, not saying a word but kissing three round scars on his torso. Alive with lust tempered by the time limit, Boromir was loath to take his long fingers off Éomer, either. He encouraged a fast climax with his tongue squiggling in the younger man’s ear beneath his hay-colored mane, pulling at oiled hard flesh till juices spilled at his command.

Red-faced, Éomer was not to be tamed so easily, not after the first time. There was not a line of Boromir’s body that went untraced or untouched. This was man in his prime, with well-formed limbs and hard muscles, a scattering of body hair that he couldn’t leave alone. Boromir couldn’t get enough of his unbound hair. His hands clenched and pulled, using it as reins before the hearthlight while Éomer screamed as loud as one who knows he won’t be heard can do while being ridden hard to completion.

There was little time for lying upon the furs and talking; if he’d had it to over again, this would have been Éomer’s wish, that they could be at ease and sleep wrapped around each other. His body had other ideas. That Boromir allowed it, Éomer would always marvel. He watched the moon sink into view as he sank into prepared heat. A clenching tightness like no other would not let him even move at first, till he became fierce and his hips took over and began to pound. “That’s it… Like you mean it!” came the silky deep purr he would never forget, though thankfully, no longer with the anguish he’d carried for too long.

Éomer poured himself out in seed and tears that time, the two men panting in aftermath. When they could move again, Boromir gave him that look that told him he’d forgotten something important. Right. Considering what went where with two men coupling, flushing the channels was always valuable.

“One last thing now, love,” Boromir smiled, a little bit melancholy perhaps. Éomer nodded. It did not seem right to do this indoors. Dressing quickly, they found the nearest side door. The lower curve of the bright moon nearly touched the distant mountains. Their streams watered the dry ground, sunk in, perhaps joined in underground conduits as it washed out to sea. Afterwards, Boromir walked away. The shadows made by the setting moon hid him, and he disappeared into the night.

Éomer returned to the hall in time for the last lament and the song of joy. The burbling in his soul could only be called joyfulness now, elation, and an absence of nothingness. He found his wife, and kissed her soundly to the hoots and catcalls of his house. After a day, after a bath, they would love. Perhaps for the first time.

Fin.


End file.
